Somalia crisis worse than Darfur, says UN

John Holmes, the UN's emergency humanitarianco-ordinator, arrives in Mogadishu

By Mike Pflanz in Nairobi

12:01AM BST 15 May 2007

The crisis faced by up to 400,000 people fleeing fighting in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, is "worse than Darfur", the United Nations' humanitarian chief said yesterday.

Aid agencies calculate that almost a third of the city's population has fled in the past two months as clashes flared between Islamic militants and troops of the transitional government.

"In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year," said John Holmes, a former British diplomat and now the UN's emergency humanitarian co-ordinator.

In Darfur, more than two million civilians have fled their villages since the war erupted more than four years ago.

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But the speed and size of the exodus from Mogadishu has eclipsed the emergency in the western Sudanese province, where there are established camps run by international aid agencies. There are no such camps in Somalia, an east African country already on its knees after 16 years of clan fighting and no central government.

Most of those who have fled in recent weeks, including women, children and the elderly, are camping in fields in areas surrounding Mogadishu, without access to food, shelter, clean water or medicines.

The few medical relief agencies operating in the region, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have reported fears of cholera outbreaks.

"We are only reaching maybe 35 to 40 per cent of those in need because of difficulties of access and security and of our presence on the ground," Mr Holmes said in Nairobi yesterday.

The flight from Mogadishu took place amid a sustained barrage of heavy shelling in civilian areas from both Somalia's transitional government, backed by Ethiopian troops, and Islamic rebels allied with disgruntled Somali clan fighters.

"Clearly there are major problems with the way these attacks were carried out, clearly major abuses went on," said Mr Holmes.

"The government categorically denied they had been involved in any human rights abuses." Mr Holmes, 56, is a former British ambassador to France and a senior diplomatic advisor to both John Major and Tony Blair. He took up his new post in March. He was forced to cut short a two-day trip to Mogadishu at the weekend after a series of roadside bombs went off in the city, although they are not thought to have been targeted at his convoy.

Some civilians are slowly returning to Mogadishu after a week of relative calm, but the threat of more fighting is high. "I don't think you can say that this is a recovering city. It's a fairly depressing prospect," said Mr Holmes.

A planned reconciliation conference bringing together all parties to Somalia's conflict has been pushed back twice, and is now scheduled to take place on June 16.

However, it is not yet clear whether senior figures from the Islamic Courts Union, who fled Mogadishu after losing power in December, will attend. They are thought to be supporting the insurgency against Ethiopian forces who patrol the capital.